Not just a diary

I don’t really remember what happened the rest of the day after I had that fight. It went pretty fast. I found myself on the bus to go home and TK didn’t talk as much, as did I.
I sat back in my seat and put my legs up against the seat in front of me. I could hear some of the whispers Chelsea and Lazibry were making in front of me… about what happened. They finally decided they shouldn’t say anything about it.
Chelsea rose up out of her seat and looked to the front shouting, “Hey Laury are you going to Exodus Wednesday?”
That name made me look up as she shouted, “Yeah!” from a seat near the front. Oh whoa she road this bus too… wait, I should’ve figured that after I had found out she was TK’s sister.

I re-lived my sigh of relief.

They did look a lot alike come to think of it. Their skin tone was pretty much the same, excepting she was lighter, and their hair color was also the same.

The bus screeched to a halt at my stop and a bunch of kids rose along with me. TK started to walk down the aisle and I figured I’d wait for him to go ahead of me when he stopped before he passed my seat. I glanced up at him to see his deal. He looked back at me as if first meeting me with a harmless look on his face.
“You gonna go?”
I didn’t say anything and passed in front of him, trusting he wouldn’t try to sabotage me from the back as I got off the bus. I immediately set off for my apartment, my hands in my pockets. Feeling the tingly feeling on the back of my neck, I turned around to see who had their eyes on me. To my surprise it was TK. All the other kids weren’t in view, but TK stood there innocently, one strap of his backpack over his shoulder, just staring. He didn’t seem to mind the fact I had seen him, but I still walked on.
“TK?” Lauryns voice questioned his action as I.
TK turned his back slowly, eyes last, and walked on.

It wasn’t the fact that he had stared at me that surprised me, it was the look on his face. It wasn’t a look of revenge or anger, but innocence and peace. I was sure of it. We wouldn’t fight anymore.

Meanwhile, back at home, still no sign of Jack. Miguel had gotten this job at the mall in this place called Shredd. He was working a lot so I was usually home alone. Anything that was ever sent home to be signed by my parents we just forged. I usually explored the city but that day something more unexpected happened.

I was slouched upside down on the old couch flipping through the six channels we got on the TV when there was a knock at the door.
I rolled off the couch and pulled up my pants before shuffling over to the door. As I swung it open I saw the last person I would’ve expected. That’s right, it was TK. He stood there for a second.
He looked at me, I looked at him. He shifted his weight nervously and scratched the back of his neck, “Uhh… Hey…”
I cocked one of my eyebrows and turned my head up to the side to show curiosity and confusion, expecting him to explain.
Another silence.
He sighed and said all at once, “Hey I was wondering… uhh… er, do you skate?”
He had a skateboard under his foot.
I nodded once, slowly, still expecting him to explain. Of course I was a skater.
“There’s a skate park over on Tramway I get free admission to… you wanna come?”
I blinked, “What’s the catch…?”
He shook his head. “No catch,” He was innocent, but I still wasn’t too thrilled about going.
“I don’t got a board,”
“Ah, that’s all right I got one you could use…”
At first it seemed obvious to myself I shouldn’t go, but I admired his efforts in trying to put our brawl behind him, or maybe he knew who to make friends with. Well I really hadn’t skated in a while and the skater blood in me was screaming out, and TK had good intentions so far so I shrugged.
“Sure.”

Wonderful. Now I was probably going to get jumped by all his buddies. This was not a good idea.

“All right come on and we’ll go over to my place to grab you a board n stuff.”
I turned leaving the door wide open and went to slip on my huge flat typical skater shoes and turn off the TV, chucking the remote across the room.
As I shut the door behind me TK shot me a side glance, “Don’t you gotta tell your folks where you’re going?”
“I…uh…nahh…”
“Um… Okay…”
We started walking.
“Where you from anyway?” He asked.
“uhh… L.A.”
“You don’t sound like it…where were you before that?”
“Technically New York… but the answer you’re on the search for is Australia.”
“Ahh, just making sure. Why’d you come to New Mex?”
“I, uh… to live with me dad.”
“Oh, well welcome to Valley Grande… where the Drunks are always stubborn and the crack houses are always partying.”
“Nice… how long you been here?”
“About a year.”
“And, er, the lass, Lauryn is your sister, right?”
TK shot me a suspicious glance, “Yeah, that’s her…”
“Where’s she from…?”
“L.A.”
“Before that?”
“Technically Miami… but the answer you’re looking for is London.”
“Heh…”
“I just got her about a week ago.”
I looked up at him, “What do you mean by that?”
“She and my real mom came from London about a week ago. I hadn’t met her until then.”
“Whoa…”
“Yeah it was pretty cool.”
He sped up ahead of me to ollie off a speed bump, and I stuck my hands in my pockets.

Finally we came to his apartment, not to far to the right of the bus stop. He opened the door and led me in, throwing his board off to the side. To my surprise his apartment wasn’t some neat little place with a mother in a white apron baking cookies in the kitchen. It was pretty messy like mine. On the couch sat a plump little boy with black hair and many freckles. He looked up at me with his beady blue eyes and stared. As I walked behind the couch to a hallway I stared back at him until he quickly averted his eyes. His hallway had three doors leading from it, and we headed into the last one.

TK’s room was surrounded with yellow and black crime scene tape labeled “CAUTION DO NOT ENTER” and in the far left corner was a bunk bed. There were CDs and boxes all over the floor. TK didn’t seem to mind. He headed to his closet on the far right and started digging and throwing stuff out from balls to socks. Some heavy metal music was playing in the background from what I saw was a pretty nice stereo system setup.
A whiny squeaky voice sounded from the den, probably the plump little boy, “Luke close your door!!!!”
TK poked his head out of the closet, “Oh, will you get the door…?”
“Then where am I supposed to go?”
TK looked and saw my dilemma. His floor was covered in a bunch of curious boxes and CDs.
“Clear a path of CDs to my bed and sit on that.” He said.
I made way over and dove onto the bottom bunk. It was a very tall bunk bed and I studied the bottom of the upper bed as I sat on it waiting for him. There was a very detailed mural drawn on the bottom. It was of some sort of land. There was a castle, a dragon, and the sky was black. Bright yellow lightning surrounded it and there were other things as well. A strand of music notes floated around this land and there were no people or creatures on it besides the dragon. It looked pretty dark and I also noticed some red clawed hands gripping the side of the picture.
Suddenly the whole top of the bed shook as somebody dropped down from the top bunk. It was so unexpected that I yelled, which made TK scream as well.

Lauryn stared at us wide-eyed, “Umm… I’m sorry?” and she truly did look it.
We cracked up and that eased her face of guilt.
“No it’s okay you just scared the crap out of me.” TK laughed.

“Oh, many apologies. I guess I fell asleep.”
“Heh… no problem. Lodi have you seen my other skateboard?”
“I believe it’s under your bed.”
“Oh yeah! Duh!” He reached under his bed, grabbed a board and headed out, “Lets go.” I followed.
“Where are you going?”
“Oh we’re going to the skate park do you want to come?”
She smiled, “I think I’ll let you guys go this time.”
“You sure?” I said.
“Yeah I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Later,” and we were soon out the door again.
He handed me a ZERO skateboard and started riding right again.
I got on mine, “Isn’t the road the other way?”
“Yeah we’re going to the Laundromat.”
I laughed, but he didn’t.
“No I’m not kidding! That’s where we got to stop first.”
“Um… okay…”
We went down the street, still within the apartment property to a building in the middle. TK first hopped his board onto a handrail of a ramp leading up to the old battered door and landed perfectly, then taking out a key and unlocking the door before sliding on in as if he had done this a million times.

The door slammed behind me and I looked around. Surprisingly there was nobody doing laundry, but there were about four kids each sitting on laundry machines, some drinking a soda from the coca-cola machine in the lobby. There was also a snack machine and a round card table. When they saw TK a couple hopped down and smacked his hand with that universal handshake that all the young people seemed to know.

Then they saw me. Some were shocked, and they looked at each other questioningly when TK wasn’t looking, but none said anything. They were small talking and the circle gathered.
“Oh Jessin this is Michael…” TK said, pointing to a tall Hispanic kid carrying a Element brand board who said ‘hey’.
“Casey…” A kid with highlighted spiked hair and a very beat up board.
“Leon…” a white boy with black hair who gave a heads up toward me.
“And Dominic…” Dominic had red hair and light brown freakles.
He held out his hand for the once again shake, “Sup”
“Everybody this is Jessin, yeah okay that’s great lets go.”
“All right.”
We skated down the street and I noticed they were all pretty good, but still the same level as me. We grinded everything we could and laughed when one of them fell on their ass messing up, just making small talk. When we got to the skate park things weren’t so dense. They acted like I had always known them and I maintained my composure.

We ragged the skatepark well that day. We grinded all the poles, jumped all the verts, and skidded up over the rims of the pool all day until all of us were badly bruised and sweating like pigs. We had gone as kids, but left as brothers… very bruised up brothers. As we walked home we didn’t even skate we were so sore.
“… oh and remember when Dominic ran into that guy in mid air?!”
“Yeah that was great Dom!”
“Well it wasn’t so great for me!” He laughed.
“Hey Jessin that was some air you were getting on that half pipe!”
“Yeah and it was great when you missed it that one time and rolled down the side!”
We laughed. I didn’t show it but it was the best time I had had in years. We ended up back at the Laundromat sitting on washing machines and chugging cokes, still laughing and having a good time.

The door unlocked and in stepped Lodi, she looked around at us shyly as she closed the door, then smiled as they welcomed her.
“Hey so you finally came to see us…”
“Yeah I got lonely.”
TK shrugged, “Well I told you, you could come with me.”
Michael laughed, “Hey you should come with us next time.” He had a Spanish accent. Come to think of it a lot of the people here did. TK too.
“Well maybe I will next time!”
“k.”
“Cool.”
We laughed and hung out some more and then went outside and sat in the cool summer night’s breeze and hung out some more on the curb. A successful day.
Hey, we should go to the mall tomorrow,” Leon sprang up. He seemed to always be full of energy. “We could go to Shredd and chill there too.”
“Ah, me brother works there,” I said.
They all immediately stared at me. I didn’t expect to get a response like that.
“Whoa…”
“Does he really?!”
“Uh… Yeah…” I said.
TK shot up, “Sweeet!!”
“Hey do you get free stuff from there?” asked Dom.
“He gets credits for how well he works and spends credits on stuff in the store. I be getting a free deck next week.” I said.
“Whoa that’s tight! You are sooo damn lucky…!” Casey said before taking the last of his coke and chucking the can in the bush behind him.

We talked about that and chilled some more for a while. I noticed Lodi stayed pretty quiet for most of the time. When she spoke it was just to one of the guys or TK. She wasn’t loud like the guys. They all seemed to like her a lot. I didn’t blame them, how could they not? She was pretty, shy, quiet, smooth… and they were all sweet on her.

After I went home I lied in bed for a while thinking. A very successful day it had been. I had a feeling I had found my home, and who I belonged with. I fit right in. I also had found a girl I liked and a skate park that was pretty tight too. Summer break was just around the corner, and it excited me to think that I had had so much fun and it was just beginning. It didn’t even bother me that I was too sore to move for all of Sunday.

Things really started looking up for me. It surprised everybody at school at how TK and I just clicked like that. He was a lot like me when I got down to it, I began to fully trust him. I got to know Lodi too, and know all about Prado Grande and the kids in it.

TK’s story was quite interesting to me. His real name was Luke Rodriguez and he had lived in Puerto Rico with his Aunt and Uncle until about a year ago. A year ago he had also met his real father for the first time when his aunt and uncle got on a plane headed for L.A.
He lived with his aunt and uncle in that very same apartment until about a week ago when his real mother came from London to marry. His aunt and uncle had then fled the country so she and her new husband just lived in it with TK.
TK’s real parents were split up, and both were remarried now. His real dad married a lady who had five kids and his real mother married a guy with a little boy whom I met in front of the TV. TK had a lot of step siblings apparently but he informed me he hadn’t met them all. His whole situation confused me.

Prado Grande was an exciting place. A rusty white fence and white brick walls surrounded it. There were three parts to Prado Grande. One none of the kids counted because it was at the far back with a separate entrance. It was mostly made up of old people and couples because they were all one bedroom apartments back there. Then there was the ‘left’ section and the ‘right’ section. The left was only different from the right because the left side was brown wooden buildings and the left was light colored stucco. Each section had their own ‘club house’ which consisted of a Laundromat, a few pool tables and stuff like that. A pool, a basketball court, and a tennis court was in between the left side and the right side.
There were approximately twenty middle school kids in Prado Grande that year. The high school kids weren’t around much, and there weren’t many elementary. They all went to Madison and road the bus. Everybody seemed to know everybody and there was always somebody to hang out with.

I also learned of the places surrounding Prado Grande. Across the busy street from the entrance where the bus stop was there was another apartment place called “Wyoming Place”. I heard bad things about Wyoming place. It was dark and the kids of Prado Grande hardly ever got along with the kids of Wyoming place. There was always a conflict going on and fights. I say it was dark because there were hardly every people out in Wyoming place. I walked through it once and saw nobody. Just dark brown shabby apartments and old beat up cars. Sure, Prado Grande was beat up too but a car would still run by every now and then. It had big green grass hills and trees while Wyoming place had nothing but rock.

There was also a real apartment complex called Casa Del Arroyo. It was an actual complex because it was just one big building of cement and stairways rather than the buildings scattered about Prado Grande that contained about eight apartments each, back to back. This place was more like a tenement. The Casa Del Arroyo kids were neutral and pretty nice but they refused to take sides in any Prado Grande-Wyoming Place fights. They were also the keepers of their section of the Arroyo because it ran right beside their place. It was a big cement ditch that stretched through this part of the city. It actually curved around Prado Grande eventually but it was still far from it. If we wanted to get to the nearest ditch to skate, or whatever, we had to go through Casa Del Arroyo.

There were four groups of kids in Prado Grande. There were the little kids who mostly stayed inside to play video games and trucks or have tea parties but they didn’t mean anything. There was our group of skaters who hung out in the Laundromat, which I soon learned to love as well, and then there were the thug kids who were associated with gang activity a lot and did drugs. They were the kids that only came out at night and stuff. The last group was the girls who just did girly things I guess.

Every weekend until the end of school I did something with my new friends. I got my new board and a pair of shoes and some other cloths from the coolest store in the mall and we went skateboarding a lot. My brother gave us free wheels and tune-ups as well. Some weekends there would be only two other kids with me… and some weekends there would be up to eight others, but I still was close with each of them in a different way.
It was about two weeks into summer vacation when I learned one of the hard truths about Prado Grande. Casey was moving away.
“But where are you going?” I asked.
“San Diego.” He said.
“You won’t be back?”
“I don’t think so…” he said. He slapped my hand one more time before turning and leaving us forever. To my surprise TK wasn’t at all saddened by one of our brother’s unexpected departure.
“…Prado Grande… funny place isn’t it.” Said Leon. We were sitting in the Laundromat again.
“Yep…” said TK.
“You say this happens a lot?” I asked.
“Yep…” said TK, “You see when people come to Prado Grande… they don’t usually stay long. We only know of one person who’s been here for over four years…and the average is one.”
“Oh…”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll probably be gone within a year too. Maybe even me. Who knows…? It could be any of us.”

TKs quote stayed with me for a while.

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll probably be gone within a year too. Maybe even me. Who knows…? It could be any of us.”

It echoed in my mind. I didn’t want to comprehend the idea of me being someplace else within a year… not yet at least. I immediately shook the idea out of my head and took a chug of my Surge.

“Oh well that’s a lovely thought…” said Lodi.
TK laughed.
I spoke up again, “Then how does this place hold up? Isn’t there like some people who will always be here?”
TK thought, but Michael spoke first.
“There’s Matt…”
Leon and TK agreed, “Yeah, Matt…”
“Who’s Matt?” Lodi and I asked almost at the same time.
TK stood on his skateboard drinking his coke, “Well, Matt’s jist dis guy you know? He’s been here forever…”
“Speaking of ol’ Matt when’s set up?”
TK went wide eyed at Leon as if he had reminded him of something. He then got excited, “Yeah! I don’t know, let’s go ask him…”

I sighed and jumped off my washing machine onto my skateboard, “Whhhatever…”
We were soon in front of a very ragged apartment building on the very very far side of the right section of Prado Grande. TK rapped on the door and stood back. A tall kid answered the door. He was rather normal looking and he wasn’t Hispanic. He looked as if he had just gotten up, “huh? Oh hey…”
“Hey Matt! How’s it going…” TK and him shook hands.
Matt still looked tired, “TK… Leon… Michael…”
“Yep,” said Leon, “We just came by to see when Set up is.”
Matt rubbed his eyes, “I dunno… I guess nobody’s organized it yet.”
Michael shrugged, “Don’t you do that?”
“I guess I will. Come in and we’ll see what needs to be done,” He turned around and slugged over to a couch where we all sat down. It had a computer in front of it. While he was turning it on he looked over at Laury and Me, “Are these new ones?”
“Oh yeah this is my sister Lodi from London and this is Jessin from Australia.”
That woke up Matt, “Are you serious? Damn…”

As I looked a Matt once again I noticed he also appeared to be wearing just his boxers and a Joe-Boxer T-Shirt but he didn’t seem to care about his look.
“Hey TK have you seen Millhouse lately?”
TK shot a look at Leon and Michael, “Uh… Matt… Millhouse’s gone.”
A look of shock went over Matt’s face then he shook his head, “No, stop joking around where is he?”
TK looked at him, “Matt… Millhouse’s gone.”
Matt sat back. He appeared to be quite distressed over this. “Not Millhouse, he would’ve came over and said bye if he were leaving.”
“He’s gone Matt.”
“Face it Matt, Mill’s out.”
“But… when?”
“A long long time ago… like back in January.”
Michael, who was sitting on my right next to Matt leaned over and whispered to me and Lodi while TK and Leon were talking to Matt about it on his other side.
“Millhouse’s been here for about three years. Matt and him were real tight.”
“Oh,” said Lodi, “That’s so sad… I hope Matt is all right.”
“He will be,” and sure enough Matt was fine.
He opened a program on the computer and displayed a few lists. One was of people, one was of supplies, and one was of reminders. Matt explained to us what this was all about.

“Every year since about eight years ago I think, all the youth of Prado Grande has gotten together to make this huge fort thing near the back ally. The back ally is over on the left side against the twenty foot wall separating the old unused apartments from the Jewish Community Center. It’s pretty dark back there but it’s perfect. We can use the power that’s still flowing from the outlets against the unused apartments for power and we even have an abandoned van. It’s kind of like… like a club. Except it sounds gay when you say it like that. The ages aloud are eleven and up on weekdays, twelve and up weekends. It’s just where everybody chills and keeps supplies for the summer wars with Wyoming.

“We also have a schedule. Wednesdays are for working and taking inventory with Exodus at night (I’ll tell you about it later). The schedule is different every summer. I guess we’re organizing it this year. Now, everybody that’s aloud in has to be on the list so we give out cards and whoever wants in signs on the dotted line and returns it to me,” he started typing something out, “You’ll see as we go.”
The cards we finally made were small but they had valuable information on them.

Prado Grande Summer 2000
Set up is June 4th… be there back ally as usual
Everybody who wants to be in must be at setup
And contribute one item to the treasury or cash.
Additional donations are cool!!
If you’re in read the contract and sign on the line.

Contract:
As long as you are with us you will
- Contribute
- Not fight with other members
- Refuse to give out any vital info. To the others
- Respect other members and commander
- Show up at least once a week
X________________________________
-MaTT-
2000 commander

He gave us all cards we broke up into groups. Lauryn and I would go with TK and Leon and Michael would go with Matt while we got the kids. We were also supposed to answer their questions and inform them of the age rule or something.

We walked along since Lauryn didn’t have a skateboard and knocked on the doors of the addresses on our list. We passed out cards to about five eleven year olds in all. They were all extremely excited, especially the ones who had been looking forward to being eleven so they could get in.
After that we all met back in the Laundromat again. Everybody was very excited. Matt was with us. He said he had nowhere else to go considering Millhouse and another one of his friends had gone. Matt was a 7th grader this year, but he had been held back so he was really fourteen. The subject got to the Laundromat.
Matt laughed, “So why do you guys like to hang out in here anyways?”
Everybody sorta laughed too, “Yeah,” I said, “What’s with this place?”
“I don’t know!” said Leon.
“I guess… well we just came here one day for a coke when we were sore and it stuck!”
“Yeah it’s not such a bad place,” said Michael, “I mean its got food… coke… underwear left in the dryers… what more could we ask?”
“Yeah, and nobody’s ever here. We can run around all we want!” Leon was currently hopping from washing machine to washing machine.
“Nobody? Ever? Whoa!” said Matt.
I laughed, “That’s great. I wonder if we just started living here if anybody would notice…”
They laughed too.
“That’d be funny. It be cool too we could just like whoop out some sleeping bags and party in the Laundromat!”
“Party in the Laundromat… now there’s a phrase I thought I’d never hear…”
At that Leon snorted coke through his nose, and we all cracked up over that.
“Nasty man!!”
It was then I noticed TK was sort of in a trance staring in my direction with a little grin on his face. That grin would come back to haunt me.
“ ‘ay TK! Wake up!” I said.
TK woke up but he had a proposition, “Hey guys… what if we did camp out in here?”
We laughed at him, “Ahh yeah get real TK!”
“I’m serious!”
“Man, that’d be tight!”
“No really we should do it! Tonight!”
A silence.
Leon snorted up a bit, “Well okay…”
Michael was ready, “I’m game if you are.”
“Jessin? Matt?”
Matt shrugged, “Whatever…”
“What do you say J-Dawg?” Leon pushed me on the shoulder.
I was silent as I searched all their faces, “…Bring it on…”

Before long we had a few pillows in there and had swept off the floors and stuff. We talked most of the night and Lauryn decided to join us as well. Everybody had told their parents they were spending the night at a friend’s. I didn’t tell my parents jack squat because I had none. Miguel I didn’t think would care if I didn’t come home for a few days. He had no responsibility over me.
At all over-night parties there’s always a contest to see who goes to sleep first so everybody can sabotage them. I was good at that game. I’d stayed up for almost a week strait before back on the streets. We ordered a pizza and had the guy bring it to the Laundromat. It was a wonder he found where it was without going to the front desk. He just laughed and we tipped him big. Before long the two pizzas were gone and we were sitting on some of the blankets on the floor in one of the aisles of washing machines with our backs to them. It was about two in the morning. We began to wobble and doubt if we would really sleep tonight, but somebody had to pass out soon. We were arguing over who it would be when I looked over at Lauryn to my right. I thought she had just been lounging but she had her eyes shut.
“Hey guys…”
“No it’s gonna be Michael… look at his eyes!”
“GUYS!”
“What?”
“Huh?”
“Look…” I motioned with my head to Lodi sitting next to me. She looked so peaceful.
TK looked at us all, “We’re not going to do anything to her guys..”
They all agreed, of course. She was too innocent.
“Yeah, she can’t fall victim to our destruction…”
“She’s good…”
After that things sort of got quiet and sleepy.
“We don’t have to be this quiet you know guys,” TK yawned, “Lodi sleeps like a rock.”
More yawns.
“Contagious.”
“Hey Jessin why you not tired?”
“Dunno? Practice.”
“Heh.”
Leon who was on my other side was the second to go, but we were all to tired to do anything.
“Truce guys.”
“yeah, truce. Peace Bruddas…”
Then out passed Matt.
“He’s out like a light.” Said Michael but soon he was out too.
TK sat across from me, “You tired?”
“No not really… I could sleep but I’m not about to pass out like these guys.”
“Whoa look at Leon…”
Leon had fallen over and was lying on the floor now. Pretty soon Matt and Michael lied down as well. Silence.
“Dude, how can my sister sleep up right like that?” It was true. Lodi’s head was tilted toward me a little bit but other than that she was completely up right.”
“Whoa…”
TK slightly smiled at his sister, “It feels weird having a sister…”
“Does it?”
“Yeah… I always thought if I had a sister… she’d be like not cool or something. Like some little runt totally unpopular and unlike me… that’s how all my friend’s little siblings are… ugly little runts like my step little brother you saw in the apartment…”
“Yeah well Lodi’s your twin too, right? Maybe there’re a difference.”
“Yeah maybe. She is pretty though…”
“Yeah…” I immediately regretted saying that. I didn’t even mean to. I was just half asleep.
TK laughed at me. He was about to say something that I didn’t want to hear when the girl started falling to her right, about to hit the ground. TK saw it to and crawled over just in time to balance her back up. He laughed.
“Okay she’s going to fall over…”
“Just lie her down.”
“How?”
“I don’t know… should we wake her?”
We looked from each other to her and then back, “Nahh…”
TK got up and turned off the light. The bright moon shined through the window, lighting up the room a little bit. When my eyes adjusted I saw TK had gotten himself a pillow and gotten comfortable. We talked a little bit more and then decided to go to sleep.
Just as I had almost fallen into a nice light slumber, perfect for sleeping upright, TK laughed in the dark.
“There she goes…”
I opened my eyes slightly, “Huh… what!” She had slid again this time toward me. She leaned against my arm and TK laughed.
“What should I do?!” I asked.
He tried to scuffle his laughs in the dark.
“Just leave her there! Aww don’t you two make such a cute couple!”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Considering as how I liked Lauryn, I was perfectly fine with leaving her sleeping on my shoulder, I was just worried about TK. He seemed kind of protective, but I figured that was because he had never had a sister before, and knew everybody recognized her looks.
I looked at her. So peaceful. I think it was about there that I passed out.

I always slept very light, so light sometimes it felt as if I wasn’t sleeping at all. It was sometimes hard for me to distinguish the dream world from the real world.
I heard a slight knock and I opened my eyes, only to see everybody was still sleeping and it must’ve been somebody’s foot hitting one of the metal machines. Lodi was still sound asleep, bunched up next to me with her head on my shoulder. I glanced at the clock on the wall, and to my surprise it was about eight thirty and everybody was still knocked out. I chuckled to myself as I saw their positions… Leon was lying on his back and TK was using his stomach as a pillow. For some odd reason Matt was lying draped on a few washing machines on his stomach, his hand hanging down. There was somebody missing and I soon figured out it was Michael. I figured he had had to be home a certain time or something and left on his own.
Lodi took a big breath and moved her head a little bit. I could go back to sleep, but I wasn’t up for it. I swung my foot out and kicked TK on the ground. His eyes rolled open slightly and he glanced at me.
“Nasty man…” I said, shaking my head.
TK didn’t seem to know what I was talking about and he closed his eyes and tried to get more comfortable on Leon. It was then he realized he was sleeping on Leon. He immediately sat up strait and his eyes were wide as he looked at where he had been lying. I snickered.
TK rubbed his eyes and Lodi all of a sudden jolted back on her hands, looking at us wide eyed. It was TK’s turn to laugh.
Her mouth went wide open, “Oh my gosh was I like that all night?”
TK laughed again and that made her blush and we just laughed it off as Leon and Matt woke up.
I guess our little Laundromat overnight adventure was successful but we didn’t plan on doing it again anytime soon. The floors were hard and cold anyway. We all decided we needed a break from each other.

A few days later Miguel got me up early.
He came into my room and shook me on the shoulder; “Come on I’m taking you with me today?”
I rolled over drowsy, “Since when?!”
“Because I got you a job.”
“A job?! I’m twelve! There’s a child labor law!”
“Yeah well I’ll tell you about it in the car. Come on!”
I got up and pulled on some pants and slipped on my shoes. Miguel and I had talked about a week ago about how we were going to pull in some extra money. He had made the point that making sure I was living wasnt supposed to be his problem. He was once again pissed at my father.
I got in the passenger side of his topless SUV. Miguel started down the street toward the gas station.
“So what kind of a job did you get me?”
“Oh there’s this place by Shredd called Hot Topic that needs some help. I know one of the guys pretty well and we’ve hung out a lot so he said he’d give you a job as long as you’re willing to work minimum wage.”
“Hot Topic? Isn’t that the punk place?”
“Yeah it’s a pretty tight store.”
“Okay whatever…”
We pulled into the gas station and Miguel got out and stuck the pump into the side of the car. He climbed back in to wait and started drumming on the dashboard to his own made up beat.

“Hey do you know how to drive yet?”
I threw him a bizarre look, “No! Of course not! I’m twelve!”
“Jack never taught you?”
“Yeah right…”
“That is really odd.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know… he taught me when I was twelve.”
“That’s probably just because he needed somebody to drive him home from the pubs.”
“True. But still we should teach you.”
I shrugged, “Sure.”
“What do you already know?”
“Pretty much everything…”
“You know how to use the stick shift and everything right?”
“Yeah.”
“All right cool lets have you drive the rest of the way then.”
I didn’t know what to say. Miguel was weird like this. It was like he had no idea there were laws or boundaries he couldn’t cross. He also expected people to know about everything. There was a click and Miguel hopped out to take out the pump. I went inside with him to pay and picked up a Surge. Yum… Surge…

When we got back to the car Miguel went ahead of me and climbed into the passenger side. I took a deep breath and looked around to make sure nobody was staring before climbing into the driver’s seat. This wasn’t the greatest car to be teaching 12 year olds to drive in considering it had no windows or roof. I was almost positive we’d get pulled over.
I started the ignition and put it into gear as if in a dream, nervousness nor fear crossing into my mind. I sat there for a moment, then finally put my foot lightly on the pedal. It felt really weird having a care under my control. I got onto the street without any difficulty but I wasn’t graceful. Actually driving a car was a lot harder than knowing how to drive a car.
I stayed calm and serious as I always did and Miguel gazed out the side of the window as if going for a joyride. At one point I was so preoccupied with how much pressure I was putting on the pedal and if my speed was okay that I didn’t notice a red light and I almost slammed into the back of an old Mercedes. Luckily I jerked to a stop.
“Jess watch it this isn’t a roller coaster.”

I would have to say my first drive wasn’t at all how I had expected it to be. I did okay but it was still totally random that Miguel let me drive the rest of the way to the mall that day.

The mall was crowded as usual.
I passed by a hunched up group of kids, “Hey Jessin!”
I recognized some people from Madison, “Hey…”
As I walked on they still yelled up at me.
“Where you going!?”
“Hot Topic.”
“Ohh sweet we’ll meet you there okay?”
“Whatever.”
We slinked along until we came across Shred.
“Hey Miguel…” a guy at a desk helped some skater had looked up.
“Hey, hold up I’ll be right there.”

I followed him over to Hot Topic. Hot Topic was a very dark store. It was made for mostly punks and Goths. It had a lot of black T-Shirts with sayings like, “I feel better now that I’ve lost all hope.” And they had about fifty different kinds of wallet chains and other leather and metal bracelets and stuff. They also had black light stuff and hair dye. Every person that worked there was always a freak with a bunch of piercings. Over all it was a pretty sweet store.

Some guy with black liberty spikes looked up from his clip board at us and hopped over the counter.
“Hey Miguel, bro, what’s hangin’,” They hit knuckles in the handshake.
“ ‘Ay, homes, what’s happening. I brought Jessin today.”
The guy cracked his knuckles and five’d me in the handshake as well.
“ ‘Ay, ‘ow you doin’, I be Craig. So you gonna work hea’ wit us man?”
I shrugged, “Sure.”
“ ‘Aight, so how bout I go n’ take yous to the back n’ we’ll let yo brova get back to his work over there. Later much Miguel.”

And with that Miguel ditched me.

Craig led me through the store and talked as he went, “Alls we need yous to do’s is work the little jobs round hea, just restocking stuff n’ dealin’ with people who can’t find stuff , n’ stuff you know what I’m sayin’, just do whatever ‘cause we’ve been needin’ it wit da popularity dis place been getting’ you know. Since you bein’ under age n’ all we can’t put yous on the payroll officially but considerin’ yer situation n’ erryting we be givin’ you ‘bout five bucks an hour cool?”
“Sure…”
“ ‘Aight now I’ll show you da stuff.” I followed him round the store while he pointed out where stuff was and explained my hours and everything. He said since this wasn’t a legal thing or anything I could basically come in whenever I wanted. I just had to come in three or four times during each week and one had to be on the weekend. I’d stay for as long as I could. This was definitely going to put a damper on my summer plans of chilling at Prado Grande.

For about a week after that, I went back ever day. It was a pretty fun place to hang around. After Craig saw I actually came back every day he even gave me a free T-shirt, black of course, that read, “Don’t piss me off, I’m running out of places to hide the bodies.” Craig was pretty cool despite his gruesome appearance. He even went and got a spike pierced through his lower lip. He offered to give me one but I passed. It wasn’t that I feared the pain, I just didn’t want a spike coming through my chin.
Then one day I was about to start walking home when Miguel showed up and told me to go into Shredd and pick out any deck on the back wall and his boys would hook me up with their best trucks, wheels, bearings, everything I needed. I was pretty surprised they were letting him have stuff this early in his job. Who knows, maybe they felt sorry for us or Miguel was hooking up the manager with weed. (Just kidding.) But hell, I was getting a new board out of it so why should I care.

It took a while, but I eventually picked out the perfect complete skateboard get up. Number 2359 deck… which happened to be Zoo York… some grind king trucks… spitfire wheels… the best bearings… oh yeah it was great, and yes everybody was jealous at the laundromat. Once again… life was good.

The next day I was woken up really early. I heard Lodi’s voice.
“Jessi….Jessi…”
I was still in dream land, passed out on my couch. Lodi? Is that you? Did you just call me Jessi? Where am I?
Suddenly TK was right behind my head, “JESSIN!”
I shot up like a freaked cat, scared to death. I immediately grabbed one of the couch cushions and smashed him in the head with it. I saw Michael and Leon cracking up. It was early. Very early. I pretended to ignore them and go back to sleep.
“Come on Man! Matt’s waitin’!”
“…wait…what…are you talking about?”
Leon through his hands in the air, “Set up man come on!”
Michael headed for the still open door, “You’re late get a move on!”
I got up and stretched lazily while the Leon and Michael ran out the door, “Lodi, come with us?”
She nodded and then followed.
I was still dizzy. It was then I noticed I wasn’t wearing a shirt. Normally I wouldn’t care considering I was a pretty good looking kid for being twelve, but I didn’t want them to know about that drawing on the back of my shoulder for some reason. They didn’t know that much about me and I planned on keeping it that way.

I faced TK, not daring to turn around.
“Hey where are your parents?”
I looked at him thoughtfully, “My what?”
“Parents… you know the things you live with…” he said sarcastically.
“Oh, they’re…uh…gone. Let’s get moving.”
“Gone?”
“Hey throw me my shirt.”
He picked it up, “Are they out of town?”
“Umm… in a way…”
He passed my shirt to me, “We’re late. We’d better go.”
I quickly put that on and found my shoes. I grabbed my skateboard and we were off.
I rounded the corner to the ally with TK and stopped abruptly, amazed. It was six in the morning and there were about twenty kids all carrying things and putting together. Matt saw us and came over.
“Bout time.”
“I know, Jessin forgot.”
He laughed, “Ha! I knew it! Nice hair-do buddy. Okay here’s the deal. We’re making this huge fort right?” I looked at it. So far it seemed to be just a dark alleyway with an old white wheel-less van off to the side.
Matt handed me a paper. It was a print out of what the fort was supposed to look like. On the back was a picture of it last year. From what I could see, there were two ends to the alley. One was a lot smaller and had the old van, and the other end was going to be barricaded by huge slabs of wood five feet tall and a door. It looked from the outside to have a roof because all you could see was the slabs of wood starting at the top of the five foot wall and tilting upward about four feet back until it was almost 7 feet tall. It reminded me of a pot. It was actually starting to take form now that I looked at it.

“Do I have to do anything?” I asked, handing the paper back to him.
“You’re supposed to help out but I think if we’re quiet we can just go around helping all these hyper-active first years do it.”
“Sounds good to me…”
“Keep a look out though. I don’t know if Wyoming knows we’re doing the set up today. One year they did and they knew all our supplies. Last year they even tried installing a camera on top of that wall right into the center open pit of the fort. It sucked, but we caught them and got a camera out of it.”
I went about holding up boards and things while they screwed them onto either side of the alley. Sparks flew everywhere when we started screwing it into the cement but it worked. The wall was tall, about two stories of cement. I looked up at it.
“ ‘Ay TK… what’s on the other side…?”
“Of what…the wall? The Jewish community Center.”
“Ahh…”
“Yeah we’ve terrorized the place a few times… and got thrown out a few times too.”

It took them until about eleven o’clock before all the boards were in place. A lot of the first years were starting to get restless and tired. I was sent to pick out a few of them to run down to Burger King and grab a bunch of burgers. I picked two short boys and a small girl to go with me.
“Okay pitch in if you want a burger!” I called and a bunch of people gave me their money before we started off.
I walked in front of them along the rusty white gates. The two boys chattered and pushed each other for a while. Then they started getting interested in me.
“What’s your name?”
“Jessin.”
“Are you from Australia?”
“Yeah…”
“Are there kangaroos there? How come you’re so tall? How old are you?”
I answered only the questions I felt like, and ignored them until we got to the crosswalk.

“Are we going to run across, Jessin?”
“No, we’re going to wait until it says we can.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll get in to trouble if you guys come back flat.”
“Ohh.”
We crossed and ordered twenty burgers from Burger King and two buckets of fries. I gave a bag or two or a bucket to each kid and we headed back.
“How come we have to carry it all?”
“Well you do want to be strong like me don’t you, mate? This is how.”
“By carryin’ fries?”
“No, by carrying lots of stuff and building up your muscles.”
“Ohh.”
When we got back the three kids I took with me were proud of being so important as about ten kids came rushing over for food. It was gone within an instant. I looked over at the fort. It looked finished to me and pretty cool. The door was all locked up with two combination locks.
I went over to TK, Lodi, and Leon sitting down in the grass with a kid that I didn’t know yet.
“Hey.”
TK hand slapped me, “ ‘Ay, Jess what’s up… Oh by the way this is Donny if you haven’t met him yet.”
“Yo,” said Donny and we slapped hands as well. He was about five feet tall and he was dressed in baggy white pants and a white shirt. He was a black skinny boy and he had black dreadlocks around his head to a little past his ears in front, but all the way down to his back in the back.
“Donny handles the station most of the time and knows how to work most of the electronic stuff.
“Station…?”
“Oh yeah you haven’t seen the inside of the fort yet. Come on I’ll show you and Lodi.”
We all got up off the ground excepting Leon who went to see what Matt was up to.
TK opened the locks on the doors and stepped inside. I ducked my head as I walked through the covered part until it got higher. The middle of the fort was completely roofless like in the picture, but I wouldn’t have guessed it from the outside. The edges had about four feet of roof all around though with bean bag chairs and things everywhere. We went to the end to the van and slid open the old white van’s sliding door. TK stood back.

“Go take a look.”
I stepped inside and was immediately impressed. The whole thing had been gutted out to now be metal all around. The front seats were still intact but they had been removed and put on rollers. The dashboard was cluttered with electronics…TVs, speakers, microphones, wires, amplifiers, and much more.
Donny came in after me, “I haven’t hooked everything up yet but we can usually get about two color TVs hooked up to these camcorders and the black and white TV to anything we want. That mixing board over there with all those tiny knobs on it I use to switch back a forth between frequencies and camcorders on the moniters.”
“Holy… how did you guys get all this stuff?”
“A lot of it is mine. Some of it was donated… some stuff we just found… one camcorder we got from Wyoming place last year… A lot of it is outdated and old but it works.”
We hopped back outside.
TK grinned, “Pretty cool huh?”
“Yeah…”
“Oh yeah and over there are the trunks. Each truck has a key-lock on it. They contain practically two of ever kind of water gun or Super Soaker and tons of water balloons… hoses… and random stuff we almost never use. In the coolers on the other side of the van there are about two hundred pre-filled water balloons…just in case.”
I shook my head amazed, “This must be some fight you got going with Wyoming…”
“I think we do it more for fun now than fighting. Its just more fun to attack each other than be allies.”
Lauryn laughed, “It does sound fun.”
“Does Wyoming or Casa Del Arroyo have anything like this?”
TK sighed. “Unfortunately yeah they do. Wyoming moves it every year and this year we have no clue where it might be. Casa Del Arroyo, being friends with both of us, has theirs under their abandoned bridge… and another in this one tree house. They don’t need all this fancy stuff like we got though.”
“Totals are… seven eleven year olds… seven twelve… five thirteen… and whoa only four fourteen. Now the schedule… You don’t have to follow the schedule but if there is a emergency or Wyoming decides to attack us… you should come running to this base for the battle and we’ll go from there. Those could happen at any time so be aware.”
He rotated some more and drug a piece of paper out of his back pocket.
“This years schedule… Mondays… we shred the skate-park. Tuesdays… we terrorize the Prado Grande Pool. Wednesdays… We chill at the mall or party at the arcade… Thursdays… Are just chill days where we chill here or at home…Friday try to make it here so we can take inventory or plans at Wyoming… And then on Friday nights it’s the big camp outs… where everybody’s invited. Make sure you bring your stuff and stuff. Saturdays… we terrorize the pool some more and meet here at noon just to get redirected with your group of friends and figure out what you wanna do the rest of the day… and then Sundays this place is closed down. Go home. Rest. Do your chores, please your parents, take a nice long shower, etc. But that night is Exodus and we all go to Hoffmintown for that.”
A kid raised his hand.
“What…um… oh yeah your name is Tyler.”
“Yeah, what’s Exodus?”
I was glad somebody asked that.
“Exodus is this Christian Church Group and Hoffmintown Church for mid-school only. It’s a lot of fun and you don’t have to be a Christian. We just skateboard over there every Sunday night at seven till eight-thirty. You’ll see when we go it’s tight. Any other questions?”
Another eleven year old raised her hand, “Do you still have the age rule for weekends?”
“Oh yeah, normally you can bring your younger brothers and sisters on weekdays if you’re responsible for them but Saturdays are for twelve and up only and Sundays are only for people with complete access… speaking of which… I have to hand out the keys.”
He went over to a trunk and drug out a bundle of chains and keys.
“Okay each one of these necklaces has at least 3 keys, one for the door, one for the coolers with the water balloons and one for the trunk. Some people’s chains will have more than others.”
He went around handing out chains to everybody, most of them putting them around their necks.
“The locks change every year guys so next year these will be useless.”
He passed me a chain off his pinky finger. It had five keys, each a had a different red symbol on it applying to the red symbols drawn on the locks of the trunks and things. Donny already had his chain. His had like ten keys on it.
“Whoa, what are all those to?”
“Oh one’s to the pool… a few are the house and Laundromat keys… and the rest are for here. I get access to everything since I own most of this stuff.”
I stuck my keys on the back of my wallet chain and stuck it into my back pocket again.
After Matt told everybody a few more things like no guns or smoking weed in the base… he let us all go. There was to be a campout in the fort tonight to celebrate.
The Campout went pretty well. A few kids’ parents wouldn’t let them come yet so it was a nice sized group. They all brought sleeping bags and such and we ordered pizza. I hung out with Lodi, TK, Leon, and Matt mostly. We chilled, talked, and chilled more.

Oh yeah and there was one more thing… the ghost story…

When things finally started to settle down the giant lantern was put in the middle of the open circle and everybody sat around the edges under the wood. A bunch of the kids wanted to tell ghost stories, so Matt made one up about one of the abandoned apartments around the corner where somebody was shot. He said the guy was brutally murdered by the killer and he kept shooting the guy in the head until the cops came. The guy supposedly left the body and ran. The police ran after him and eventually caught him, but when they returned to the scene the body was gone, leaving only a trail of blood into the apartment. Matt said they never found the body.

Everybody looked at him with wide eyes. A twelve year old girl enthusiastically asked, “Does that mean that dead guy still might be in there?”
Matt shrugged casually, “Well I don’t know… he could be… or maybe he’s not quite dead… and his lost tortured soul still drifts around… who knows.”
A older boy laughed, “Or some other guy stole the body at the scene!” He apparently wasn’t as gullible.
Matt simply shrugged again, “Could be. But that wouldn’t explain why nobody’s ever dared to go in there…”
“Because nobody can!” said the boy, “It’s locked.”
Matt shook his head, “Nope. A window’s broken.”
The boy couldn’t think of another explanation to say. We stared at him. He knew we were going to tell him to go in there if he was so sure so he gave in early.
“Okay, okay I’ll go in there.”
A couple younger girls gasped, but we just stared at them.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, why not?”
Matt got up and headed for the door. Everybody else started the get up when the boy looked around.
“Wait, you mean right now?”
“Yeah, of course.” People said, “Just do it!” “Are you chicken?”

We went out the door and rounded the corner. Everybody talked until we got about three abandoned apartments away to one with a big shattered hole in the window. It was dark, very dark. I estimated by the moon that it was about nine o’clock.
Everybody made a semi-circle around the house and pushed the daring child in the center.
“Go! Go!” They were all whispering. Matt shushed them.
“Well…uh… what do I have to do? Just go in and come out?” He tried to look confident.
“Go in there… and go back to the bedrooms and tell us if the body’s in there.” Matt said simply.
The kid shivered, “No way!”
“Why?”
“A dead body? Nasty!”
“What’s the big deal? He’s dead.”
“I really doubt there’s a dead body in there.”
Matt nodded, “Yeah me too. But you could check for us. Go in and look!”
“Fine I’ll go in but only to prove it’s not haunted,” he turned and walked toward the house.
“Then how about you stay in there for fifteen minutes?”
The kid turned back and searched all our faces quickly for an excuse, “But why?”
“To see if it’s haunted. If it is the guy’s ghost will surely find you after fifteen minutes.”

The kid had had enough. He came back and through his hands in the air. “No way man! No how! What if something’s living in there? I’m not doing it!”
Matt turned, “Come on guys. I knew he would chicken out.” Everybody turned back to the fort taking after Matt.
The kid looked at us, “Wait!”
Everybody turned back.
“…I-I’ll do it.”
I’m sure shivers ran down their spines.
“Fifteen minutes?” Matt asked.
“…Y-yeah… no big deal. I’ll do it. But what’s in it for me?”
Matt thought. “An I.O.U. of course. You’ll get your next request. But if you’re a pussy you can back out now.”
“I’m no wuss, piece of cake.” He turned around and climbed in the window. I could see it was pitch black in there.
“We’ll come back in fifteen!” said Matt. Whispers broke out amongst the small crowd.
We went back, leaving a few people behind at the entrance from the house to make sure he stayed inside.
“Poor kid. I think his name’s Kyle. Do you think he’ll last?”
We were against the outside wall of the fort.
“I dunno,” said TK, “If he does I’d be surprised. It is pretty eerie out here with the pitch black and all.”
“I give him two minutes.” Said Leon.

Lauryn looked back at the apartment and shivered, “I hope he’s all right in there.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?” shrugged Leon.
Matt put his hands in his pockets. “We all know ghosts aren’t real. The only ghosts in this life are the ones in our minds… the ones that torture us when we’re the most on the very edge… the most responsive and expecting, so they exist flawlessly in the mind. When somebody’s that afraid… they will surely fall victim to their own mentality…”
I nodded, knowing exactly what he meant; “His thoughts will surely destroy himself any minute now…”
Lodi stared at the ground, “I guess it’s inevitable.”
Five minutes later we heard the sounds of somebody thrashing through the rocks like a typhoon. We looked over to see it was the kid, Kyle. We tore after him all the way to the to the basketball court, a few kids behind us. Finally Kyle got to the fence and he turned around and faced us. His breath was heavy and uneven and in the street lamp on the court we could see the sweat dewing up on his forehead.
Everybody immediately cluttered him with questions.
“What happened?!”
“Oh my god!”
“Did you see him?”
“What happened man?”
He closed his eyes and slid his back down the fence to sit down. He bunched himself up and put his hand on his face and I could see he was shaking.
“Shut up! Shut up! Let him breath!” TK backed everybody up a little bit.
Lodi went down on her knees in front of him, “Are you all right?”
For a moment he just breathed and didn’t say anything.
“I…. I…He’s in there…” He took his hand off his head but he didn’t look up. “The whole time I heard things… It had to have been him… It was pitch dark but I-I s-swear I saw something m-move. I-I…I could feel him watching me!”
He wasn’t crying, he was too terrified to cry but he was sweating like a pig. I’d never seen anything like it.
Matt turned around and yelled at some of the kids, who were just there staring, to go back. They obeyed instantly… Kyle wasn’t a pretty sight. It was just me, TK, Lodi and Matt now.
He put his hand on his face again. His face was red and his mouth twisted as if he was crying but he still didn’t. I’ll never forget that face of pure horror.
He tried to say something but nothing would come out at first. He voice was high and squeaking and his breathing still wasn’t even when he kept saying “Oh my god, Oh my god” over and over.
Lodi sat on one side of him and Matt on the other. Matt put an arm around his shoulder, “Breath, Man, Breath,” and Lodi took his hand.
“Take a deep breath and concentrate on breathing man.”
Finally Kyle took a shaking deep breath and started to calm down with us all consoling him.
“I’m sorry Kyle I shouldn’t have made you go in there.” Matt said.
“That… was the most… most freaky thing to ever happen to me…” Kyle finally said in an even tone. He threw his head up against the chain fence behind him and looked up at the stars.
“Nothing happened to you Kyle, you’re fine…”
“I know I know… but I’m never going in there again. There’s something in there.”
“No Kyle, no listen to me. I made that whole story up. There’s nothing in there.”
At that he got mad, “Yes there is! There was something in there! I swear!”
“I made the whole thing up Kyle! I made it up as I went! The most that happened there was one of the Bloods got shot once but he lived, Kyle, he lived. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“No, man, no!”
“Yes!”
“Dude, I don’t care what you say there was something in there…”
We all stood up.
Matt sighed, “In that case you should go back a report to the others.”
He began to run back and we all just looked at each other with our hands in our pockets. We were silent, just staring at the cement trying to figure out what to do.
Finally Matt spoke, “…well… I guess this will be one heck of a summer…”
We all sort of laughed.
“Lets not tell everybody you made the story up until the end…” said TK.
“Yeah… I guess it’ll just make it funnier.”
Another silence, then Matt again.
“You… you don’t think he really…” he searched our faces for a moment, “Never mind.”
We all knew what he was going to say. TK threw his hands up, “No… it’s like we said…”
“Yeah…” said Lodi, “He was so afraid of the unknown… his mind made it come true inside…”
TK looked at her, “He just imagined it?”
I shrugged, “Maybe, maybe not… What’s there to him isn’t going to be there to us. He can’t help that. He has created his own…” I searched for the word, my hands still in my pockets.
“Fear…” Lodi put her arm through mine and leaned against my shoulder, tired and cold.

We all stood around there under the pale light of the street lamp by that old chain link fence against the back of the basketball court for a couple more minutes,

finally decided Kyle had truly fallen a victim to himself.

I confirmed an important philosophy that night. I figured if some one believe in something or feared it that much, it would come true in their minds with out them being able to help it. But, what was Kyle really fearing? He was afraid of something being inside the apartment but what if there was? Big deal. Was he afraid something was going to hurt him? Was he afraid of something just popping up out of nowhere? If something did pop out of nowhere what fear would that be; it would end there. Nothing would happen to him. I had a feeling Kyle himself didn’t even know what he was really fearing inside there, that’s why he was attacked by his own inner thoughts.

Right then and there I decided I would never let something like that happen to me. If I ever feared anything, I would make sure I knew what exactly it was I afraid of. It was that simple.

The next Monday that came we all went down to the skate park to show off our skills, and as always got sore. The summer fort thing turned out to be really awesome. It seemed every time we went there, there would always be some one else to hang out with. Donny stayed there a lot mostly at the van in what we called “the command seat”. He had finally hooked everything up complete with a secret video camera hidden attached to one kid’s apartment that was near the entrance to Valley Grande. It showed the entrance gate and the entrance to Wyoming as well, just for security. The side entrance between the back and the right section of Valley Grande had a camera there too, but it was only a cheap black and white one. We had three more mobile cameras now to do with as we pleased. It was pretty neat. I didn’t know people this young could be capable of something like this.
The next Friday was very neat. There was another camp out that night but the meeting was much more interesting.
“We plan to attack first this year on Wyoming.” Said Matt. “We want to get them some time this week and plan it well… so… anybody got any ideas on what we should do first?”

For the next hour Dominic, Lodi, Donny and I sat around and chilled while the six others went over plans on who would cover who if whatever happened, and as started to get supplies together.
“What’s your elective this year Jess?” Dominic asked.
“Elective?”
“Yeah, you know like your extra class like Art or PE or something…”
“Was I supposed to pick one?”
“Oh yeah you must’ve been absent when they picked them…”
“So what will I go in?”
“They’ll probably put you in a random one.”
“With my luck it’ll be Home Ec. Or something.”
Lodi laughed, “Home Economics was so fun this year with you in it.”
“Yeah, it was pretty fun.”
“Who was in your kitchen?” Donny asked.
“It was I, Jessi, Tracey, Chelsea and Jessica.” Lodi told him.
“Why did you get into a group with all girls stupid!”
“I didn’t pick my group… but it really didn’t matter because we just messed around the whole time anyway… Hey Lodi are in Home Ec for this year?”
“I put it down as my second choice. My first was Musical Theater or Choir.”
“Me and Donny put down Art or Computers.” Dominic slapped the fly off his freckled nose.
I looked to Donny, “What grade are you both going into?”
“Eight. We took Art I last year. It was a breeze. I heard in computers you can send and instant messages to people when the teacher’s not looking.”
“Tight.”
“Oh speaking of Chelsea, do any of you know where she is?” Lodi looked at us.
“I saw her the other day, so I guess she’s not sick anymore. She’ll come around here eventually…” Donny didn’t seem too pleased about that.
“She’s a very hyper child,” said Dominic, “Seems so quiet without her hopping around here.”
Lodi laughed, “It does.”
“At school she was pretty into Jessin.” Said Dominic. “She goes around always talking about you… it’s funny. Sad thing is all the other girls actually seem interested when she brags about knowing you.” They laughed.
“Yeah, Jessin, how do you do that?” asked Donny.
I shrugged.
“Maybe it’s a new kid thing…”
Dominic looked at Lodi, “Hey, Lodi, you tell us. What do the girls like about him… and your brother too! They’re like chick-magnets!”
Lodi shrugged and smiled on the verge of a silly laugh.

They had come up with a plan… but it was complicated and I dont like describing stuff… it kicked ass though.

I didn’t return home at all that day. Another camp out was that night. Only about ten kids showed up to this one. We went to bed pretty early. I slept slouched against one of the walls with my legs out. Life was good. Tomorrow I’d go get a hair cut…

I awoke to somebody yawning. I looked over and saw Matt was up but I closed my eyes and relaxed awhile longer. I heard TK beside me get up. Two minutes later there was a loud clanging sound. I flew bolt up right, my eyes wide. Everybody else did the same to see TK with two frying pans in his hands.
“Rise and shine!!!” He shouted and clanged the pans together again.
Dominic and Leon through a few shoes or pillows at him, and TK just laughed.
Lodi gave a moan, “Lukas!”
I threw myself face into a pillow on the floor and pretended to go back to sleep. Leon and Michael moaned and followed my example, toppling all over me.
Matt and TK laughed some more, “Don’t make me bang these pots together again!”
Everybody moaned and threw a few things at him again.
Clang!
At this Michael and Leon were thoroughly enraged and they hopped up and chased TK out of the fort. Matt ran after them laughing.
I got up and slouched against the wall again; Dominic beside me did the same and Lodi scooted back in between us and leaned against my shoulder tired.
“What time is it?” asked Dominic.
A mutter from a pile of kids on the other side said, “6:30”
“Oh god… thanks Donny…”
Another mutter from the pile of people, “No problem, mon.”
Our leisure was not long. The party returned through the door with TK in captive.
“Come on guys! Get up! Lets go swim!”
Laury yawned and went forward, turning to Dominic and me who were perfectly fine with sleeping longer, “Come on Jessi! Dominic! Hop to it!”
We moaned.
She held out her hand and I took it with her dragging me up to my feet as best she could, “Where we going again…?”
“To the pool.”
I yawned, “All rot…”
We all went out and split up to go get on swim stuff.

When I got home I remembered I didn’t have swim trunks, so I went inside and talked to Miguel for a little bit. I watched some WWF for a while and then turned around and started to head back to the pool after changing into some shredded denim shorts and taking off my shoes.

When I got there I saw most of the people were already there, but nobody was in the pool yet. They were all standing at the edge in their swimsuits looking at the water.
“You first…”
“I’m not going in!”
“I dare you!”
“Wussy!”
“Are you kidding? That water is like ice!”
“Yeah! It’s like seven in the morning too!”
“I’m going to push you.”
“Somebody jump in already.”
This was too good an opportunity to miss, I just had to do it.
I rushed at the line as fast I could and put my hand two people’s backs. Before anybody could react I reached over and pushed Leon in as well. I then backed off. I looked over Lodi and two other girls, all wearing two-piece bathing suits. They were laughing pretty hard.
“Well, well… look who decided to show up…” I said, looking at Chelsea.
She sat up from her lawn chair and pulled down her sparkly pink sunglasses to look at me, “Well I couldn’t miss a perfectly good opportunity to come to the pool and get a tan!”
TK, Leon, and Dominic had gotten out of the pool. They stared at me with killer eyes. Matt and Michael were cracking up at the edges.
“Jessin… I am so gonna kill you…” Dominic stared at me shaking his head. Just then TK went over to a bush and whooped out one of the biggest super soakers I had ever seen. The smirk on my face slowly dropped along with my bottom jaw.
In the blink of an eye I took off like lightning. I tore across the streets like mad in my bear feet. TK, carrying a water gun the size of himself, couldn’t keep up so he stopped there, aimed, and pulled that trigger with all his might.
A steady stream of high-pressured water pounded me in the back. I quickly grabbed a trash can lid and took cover. The water clanged against that metal trash can lid so hard I almost fell over. Then it stopped. I raised my head and took a look around. That was exactly what TK wanted. He shot me in the forehead and I ducked back under. This little game went on for about five more minutes until TK finally ran out of water. I slowly came back, streaks of wetness across my whole body.
“Okay, okay I give in!” I said, walking towards them with my arms in the air.
They stared me in the eye threateningly and I couldn’t help but smirk. Dominic seemed to want to say something, but he couldn’t find the right words.
“R-revenge…” was all he came out with.
“Will come your way,” said TK.
“Be afraid… be very afraid…” added Leon.
By then Matt and Michael were already swimming around. I came and sat down by the edge of the pool as the other three guys jumped in.
“Are you going to swim?”
“Nope, I went home and remembered I didn’t have any trunks.”
“Just swim in your shorts. Nobody’ll care.”
“Oh yeah…” I began to take off my shirt, but remembering that tattoo I stopped and shook my head, “Nah…”
“Come on Jess!”
“No one’s going to care what you look like with your shirt off!”
“No, I just don’t feel like swimming,” I said. The truth was I actually looked pretty good with my shirt off.
“Ahh, come on!” TK shot me with quick squirt of his super soaker in my gut.
“Damn you!” I said. We laughed. “Don’t make me come over there…”
They messed around in the water and shot each other for a while and I sat down in a lawn chair, getting tired. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the warming sun. About fifteen minutes later I noticed it had gotten really quiet. I opened my eyes at about the same time they picked up my chair. They carried it pretty fast before I could even react and sure enough, through me in the pool, chair and all.
I arose out of the water and shook my hair off. My eyes darted to the guys, laughing on the side. I quickly grabbed the super soaker that was floating in the water and shot every one of them. That high-pressure water really did hurt, so I gave them mercy. They were still cracking up.
I shook my head and got out of the pool, pulling my sticky cloths away from my skin and shaking the water off my head. “You imbeciles!”
“Well you might as well swim now…” said TK.
“Heh… oh shut up.” We laughed and I went and sat down by the girls to dry off, hoping the color on the back of my shoulder wasn’t visible through my white shirt. It wasn’t long before the girls got to my hair and decided to put little braids in it. While the guys were soaking each other and pushing each other around the pool, I was sitting on the side in the midst of three girls all messing with me. Hey, I could do that everyday.

“Jessin! Say Good Day Mate!”
“No!”
“Please! It’s so funny!” Chelsea pleaded.
“Why!!”
“Because, just do it.”
“Good-Day-Mate.” I said in my best American tone, annunciating each and every letter.
“No, you have to say it like an Aussie!”

Chelsea screamed as TK pelted me in the stomach once again with a water gun. The girls screamed and jumped up, Chelsea chewing out TK, who was laughing like crazy.
“You were getting too comfortable Jess!”
I blinked, “Wonderful.”

It was then I remembered I had to go down to Hot Topic to work. I went over to the edge of the pool, “I got to leave.”
TK got out of the water and was drying himself off, “Where you going?”
“The mall.”
“Sweet. I’d come but I promised this girl I’d meet her at Dions for lunch.”
Chelsea shot up, “You have a date?! With who?”
TK shrugged casually, “This girl Jocelyn.”
Matt’s eyes widened, “Jocelyn Valley?”
TK nodded and swung his shirt over his head, “Anywho what are you guys gonna do?”
“We got stuff to do…” said Dominic, looking at Matt suspiciously.
“What about you?” TK said looking at Lodi.
She shrugged. TK frowned. Everybody was dressed now.
Before I could stop myself, I jumped at the opportunity, “You can come with me if you would like. I can’t leave Hot Topic though.”
She smiled, “All rot! Do you work there or something?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
They fluttered with questions, “Whoa you never told me that!”
“How did you manage that?”
“Do you really get paid?”
“How old are you anyway?”
“Look I have to go,” I said.
“Me too. Adios brotha.” And we filed out the gate.

It took me a few seconds to recap myself at the thought of Lodi coming with me and what I had just done, then when I woke myself up I really wanted to talk to her, but of course I couldn’t think of anything to say. Luckily she eased the tension within an instant.
“So how do we get there?”
I slowed down my pace a little bit as I walked toward my apartment, “I don’t know yet. I find a way every time I go. First we’ll see if me brother’s home.”
“Oh yes, your brother Miguel. He does work at Shredd right?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“How old is he?”
“I’d say about sixteen or seventeen. He’s pretty cool.” I put my hands in my pockets.
“Oh, so you live with a parent.”
I paused, “Sort of…”
“Why don’t they drive you?”
I chuckled at the thought, “Nah, I don’t think me father would ever do something like that.”
“Oh, I see… so he’s never really around is he…”
“That’s right.”
“So why did you come to America?”
We walked in silence for a moment, “I don’t know…” I noticed my voice got smoother when I said that, “To attempt a new life I suppose… but what about you? Why did you come?” I glanced at her casually.
She sighed, “My mother wished to merry a man who lived here. We were supposed to go back right after we came but…my brother kind of got in the way. Now she and he are considering staying in America.”
“Well what do you like better? London, or America?” we approached my door and I faced her.
“Well at first I deeply sought to go back to London… but now…” she smiled softly, and finally looked up at me with those calm eyes, “I think I’m starting to like it here…” she looked back down shyly and chuckled slightly and I opened the door and walked in.
“I apologize in advance for anything grossly disgusting on the floor.”
She laughed. I yelled out for Miguel and he came from the shower, in nothing but boxers.

Other than that… things went pretty well after that. Lauryn was more than a pretty girl, she was a lot of fun to hang out with. We spent awhile at Hot Topic… I got yet another piercing. I got really used to talking to her. She wasnt like other people I met. She was never distracted, and she knew what she wanted. She was a girl of no fear, but she had one problem. She was selfless… and wanted nothing more than to make other people happy. I would learn later that some guys found it quite easy to take advantage of her…

…and that scared me.

That summer I kind of became protective of the girl. TK knew it, but that kid knew when to keep his mouth shut when he found stuff out. TK was acctually quite relieved, because he knew some guys intentions too. Anytime some guy advanced towards her, I was there to scope him out.

The people knew not to mess with me…
And now they knew not the mess with her.